UI/UX Case Study : Ferns N Petals

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UX Diaries

8 min readSep 11, 2020

As students of Visual design, for the very first time we got the opportunity to explore through the field of User Interface and User Experience. At the beginning of a new partnership, me and my partner (Ashveen Kaur) tried researching and analyzing about the vast field of UI/UX. We then considered to do an in depth research and analysis of the website — Ferns N Petals. Our final outcome and result was to see how our user gets to have the best experience which we can offer. We, under the guidance of Abhrojit Sir and Rajeev Sir brought about some changes in order to improve the User Experience of the website.

Disclaimer: This is not affiliated with the official website of Ferns N Petals. This case study is for educational purposes only.

Ferns N Petals

Ferns N Petals (FNP) is India’s largest online flower and gift delivery service with franchise stores across India. It is also one of the largest flower retailers in the world.

The online gifting industry is one of the contributors to the growth of Indian e-commerce space and is set to take a larger pie in the overall market in the coming future. FNP established a new edge to this online gifting industry and also flower gifting culture in the country.

Industry: Gifting

Tagline: Flowers, anywhere anytime

Why did we choose Ferns N Petals?

Gifting is one of the most special ways of expressing any emotion to your dear ones. Also, the gifting methods, culture and other aspects related to gifting have seen a huge change through the past few decades. For the current scenario, searching a quirky gift online can be done with much more ease and convenience. Ferns N Petals has great potential of reaching to a wider target audience. Not only that, it also has the potential of bringing about a change in the overall gifting industry. It already has set its trademark in the industry but just by making very little changes in the website, it can become way more interactive and user friendly.

Research

The main goal with this research is to understand people’s actions, needs and behaviours, to gain a deeper understanding of the problems and receive valuable insights for the design decision on this project.

Mission and Vision of the brand

Mission

FNP strives to become a Rs 500-Crore business by 2020 and staying ahead of the competition exponentially by offering customers a wow experience through continuous innovation of premium products and services by using world class technology and processes.

Vision

Ferns N Petals passionately strives to be the largest premium gifting leader with flowers, gifts, cakes and weddings being the core verticals driven by people’s first approach and innovation in all spheres of business.

Purpose of the website

At times, Ferns N Petals helps you to be with your loved ones on their special occasions/days. It helps you deliver your gift to 100+ countries worldwide. The services offered by the website can help you to bring a smile for your loved ones, anytime, anywhere in the world.

Stakeholder Analysis

Understanding the stakeholders for the brand is the most important aspect in terms of research. In case of Ferns N Petals, we first tried understanding that what the users want. After research, the stakeholders of Ferns N Petals were:

Customers
Employees
Delivery executives
Retailers

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

Ease and convenience
Saves time
World’s largest chain of floral boutiques. A bouquet is sold every 5 seconds at Ferns N Petals
Rarest of rare flowers anytime, anywhere in the world
Delivering flowers/gifts faster than the courier service
Presence at every 200 kms in India
Order Delivery within four hours of placing the order
More than 185 outlets, 40% women entrepreneurs.
Variety on a single platform

Weaknesses

Trust issues with the products

Opportunities

The young generation is aware about personalized gifting and shows immense interest in it. Hence having youthful interactions can prove to be very successful for the website.
The addition of new categories always results in more footfalls, better conversions, increased ticket size, and thus the profitability of franchisees.
Expanding retail footprint to include south-eastern countries.

Threats

Preference for offline mode (because trust issues: fake websites, timely delivery, safety and quality issues,etc)

Target Audience Analysis

After conducting a few surveys of the website and researching about who all frequently use FNP for gifts, and their advertisements here is the target audience for the website:

Bachelors
Busy working-class
Young people staying away from their loved ones
Young people with above average education and incomes
People who immensely love flowers/plants. Also the ones who think gifting flowers is the way of showing your love to someone.
Elders from tier-2/tier-1 cities

Competitor Analysis

Winni has a more powerful audience than FNP and delivers gifts to 600 cities.
FlowerAura’s services include keeping their customers updated even if they want a midnight delivery. They’re very particular about providing service on time.
Giftcart provides you with gift experts offering advice and ideas on gifting via instant chat. Strong product insights and alliance with international brands.

Understanding the key problems

No proper space management — The white space describes the areas between different elements on a website. As an essential design element and a powerful tool of UI design, it is not taken into consideration here while understanding the user. It’s just all over the place and not equal anywhere throughout the website.
Image overload — Visually marketing is powerful but it can easily overdone and it is clearly overdone here. Too many images distract the users from what the actual goal of the website is. The less users have to think about the interface or design, the more they can focus on accomplishing their goal on your website.

Not a responsive design — With more people now accessing websites both via mobile devices and desktops, it is essential to make sure your website looks great across all screen sizes. Ferns N Petals does not provide us with responsive design. It fails to build interest or enjoy the experience of using their website when accessing through different devices/screen sizes. For example, when you browse through the desktop site on a mobile browser, you won’t be able to figure out what’s happening around. Too many images, not including the key aspects, etc are some of the features Ferns N Petals has not looked upon.
Overwhelming users with choices — Too many products, too many options are leading to problems like decision fatigue.This is because the human mind finds it overwhelming to process a lot of information at once. Users will either prefer not to go for the product, rather than getting confused and ending up making the wrong decision. If users face paradox of choice while using the website, the website is equally failing to reach its audience and grab more customers. In some cases, excess choice leads to anxiety and customers eventually start focusing on the cons of the service/product more than the pros.
Repetition — The content of categories as well as products is showcased multiple times throughout the website. This is causing a problem for the customers as any viewer won’t like to see what he/she has gone through just a few seconds ago.

Lack of feedback — There is no option of giving feedback or any kind of customer interaction in the website.
Inconsistency in icons — A set of very common, inconsistent icons have been used in the website. The text need not be there if the icons are helpful enough for the users.